


Knock on Heaven's Door

by The_Reeds_of_Enki



Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, F/M, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Reeds_of_Enki/pseuds/The_Reeds_of_Enki
Summary: Grudge match: Shagaru Magala. Fifteen years after the Siki Massacre, Sayata Clements and her unlikely allies combat the virulent Frenzy that once again threatens their world.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Knock on Heaven's Door

The day the Frenzy found Sayata Clements' village was just like any other. She was on a hunt, and it was going terribly.

"Nobody said it could shoot konchu!"

"Why is it breathing _purple fire_?"

"It's still attacking me!"

" _Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!"_

From the mossy hill Sayata perched on, she examined her three teammates through the lens of her bowgun. It was night. Only the fickle light afforded by the stars breached the verdant fortress of Yuku Forest's canopy. She made out three blurry humanoid shapes and another, much larger shape. It had wings, a frilled head, and a shovel-like beak.

The Jumbo Village guild charter had sent them to kill an unusually aggressive yian kut-ku, but by the looks of how things were going, it was going to kill them instead.

"Make it stand still!" Sayata said. The weight of her bowgun, an impressive firearm that was more cannon than rifle, bore down on her knee as she took aim.

It was a beetle-green heavy bowgun, a member of the Shooting Star series. Smithed from rare ores, an overlay of two spiky crosses in the semblance of twinkling stars ran down its length. It was as long as she was tall and shook the dirt at her feet, _BOOM-chhk-BOOM,_ every time she cranked its bolt and fired.

 _BOOM._ A bullet the size of her fist burst from its barrel. It narrowly missed the kut-ku, gouging a bowl of dirt and crushed roots into the earth. A shockwave flowered from the crater, a footstep from poor Gregory Hassel, and knocked hunter and hammer to the floor.

"Sorry!" Sayata cried. He was moving, right? She didn't... no, he was getting up now. So, not dead, at least. _Phew. Serious mode now, Sayata. No more mistakes._

It took Sayata's full strength to crank the bolt back. With a heave and a metal _chhik!_ it was once again ready to fire. But the clearing was dark, and a mixed film of sweat and forest dew forced her eyes shut. She used the nozzle as a fulcrum to rest against the hard-packed loam. _Breathe_. She wiped the sweat from her brow.

This sweltering forest was nothing like the temperate chill east of the Arctic Ridge... What she wouldn't give for the Frenzied horde to be chased from Siki, her mountainous homeland, where she didn't need to wipe her face just to _see_.

The glint of Cota Tallick's macalite-blue blades, each the size of her forearm and bound in green maccou hide, caught her attention. She was waving them wildly, as if the monster was somewhere above her.

"I'll help!" Sayata said. "Out of the way!" She didn't want the monster falling on her teammate if she managed to knock it out of the sky.

"No! It's behind-"

_BOOM._

Sayata waited for the satisfying crunch of smoldering cartilage as it hit the floor. Much to her disappointment (and confusion) it never came.

"Sayata, you idiot, it's headed straight for you!"

"Whaaaa...?"

 _Oh_.

True to Cota's word, the kut-ku slammed into her with the force of a stampeding bulldrome. Almost as painful as being thrown onto a knot of roots was the realization that somehow she had missed the giant chicken breathing globs of bright plasma as it barreled into her. That had never been an attack; Cota had been trying to get her attention.

No ribs broken, thankfully, but _Sha,_ that _hurt._ This wasn't working. They needed light. Lots of it.

Now safely removed from the distant rumble of steel on scale, Sayata dug through the aptonoth-hide satchel by her side. Folded into its compartments were ten unique cartridges of ammunition. She pulled out a clip with a garish yellow stripe; while she plugged it in, she kept her eyes on the kut-ku... it wasn't getting the drop on her again.

I'm gonna shoot a flashbang!" Sayata shouted. One trigger- _click_ later, the volatile fusion of novacrystal and gunpowder exploded.

It was though Sayata loosed a small sun inside the shadowed grove. Even with her eyes shut, its luminescent intensity pocketed her eyelids with dancing red spots. It was a shock powerful enough to daze a deviljho out of a feeding frenzy.

...but _not_ , apparently, the kut-ku? Sayata rubbed her eyes; no, there it was, plain as day, back turned against her. It punched its shovel beak into Harold Kisaki's bone-mail and smashed its marrow plating. Metal links spooled out where the beak cut into it like threads of frayed fabric.

To add insult to injury, Harold's head bobbed like flotsam on the Jumbo Harbor Sea— _oh Sha, tell me I didn't stun him!_

Cota and Gregory charged on its position. The kut-ku let out a hoarse shriek, _SCREEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH,_ and batted its wings. It was airborne.

The yian kut-ku made a half-circle in the air, two evil red eyes fixed on Sayata. The jaggedness of its beak gave it a cruel smile as it swooped down.

"The eyes!" Cota shouted. "Go for the eyes!"

Sayata fixed the growing orange body in her sights. Now or never.

_Go for the eyes, Sayata. The evil, red... eyes... that look just like— like—_

The kut-ku let out a shrill scream, and for a moment, it was her parents' voices, shouting for she and her brother to escape.

Trigger-c _lick_!- _BOOM._ The bullet sailed right past the kut-ku's ear and splintered a cluster of trees. The near miss was enough to spook the kut-ku; it faltered in mid-air, just long enough for a long brown pole to pound its body into the dirt. Its head twisted at an unnatural angle and gurgled red foam. Branches speared its filmy wings like bloody wooden nails.

"Timber!" Gregory cried. "Shoot it, Sayata! Er, Sayata?"

Sayata stared at the kut-ku's crooked scales, those unnatural eyes, the way it writhed under Cota's blades _like teeth_ cutting into its body it bled _like Mom_ and _she thrashed under the weight of the arzuros, and Dad was shouting, was shouting_

"Snap out of it, Sayata!"

Sayata blinked. Twice. Shook her head. It should be so hot, so humid, but all she could feel was Siki's wintry air, could only hear the gnash and tear of her life rent by a thousand monsters screaming in feral harmony.

"Huh?"

" _Carves_ , woman," Cota said. "Hunt's over, if you hadn't noticed."

"Oh. Right. Thanks." Sayata took a deep breath of warm, moist air. A ray of soft light broke through the treetops. What was the thing the doc said when things got bad? Oh yeah, _stay in the moment. Focus on what you can feel._ She left the Frenzy behind fifteen years ago. She couldn't let the mere memory of it get in the way of her career.

One thing was for sure: she definitely wasn't in her cozy mountaintop village anymore. Sayata took in the oppressive heat, the way her clothes stuck to her like a second skin, the crooked purple scales of that freakish kut-ku...

Gregory and Harold hovered over its corpse. They had their knives out, but were apparently too busy arguing to carve any further.

"I'm telling you, it was a yian _garuga_ ," Gregory said. "What kind of kut-ku has purple scales?"

"It shrieked like one too," Cota said. She tapped her knife against the creature indecisively, as if wondering which of the three Guild-allotted parts she wanted.

"You're both being stupid," Harold said. "Look at its tail. It would have the stinger thing if it was a garuga."

"Could be a special yian garuga," Cota said. "My mom fought an arzuros with red fur once. Said it was fiercer than usual, too. Something about _devious_ monsters?"

"I think they're called deviants," Sayata said. "But don't you think something looks, I dunno, _wrong_ about it? Um, _Frenzy_ wrong?"

"No one asked you," he said. "What do you know about hunting monsters anyway? It's obviously just some variant of kut-ku. Seems like you know more about hitting _people_ , anyhow."

"Okay, I deserved that," Sayata said, "I'm sorry. It was an accident. But hey, I got this tree to fall on it. That counts for something, right?"

"That was just an accident too," Gregory said. "If you ask me, you don't deserve a carve, seeing as we did all the actual _work_."

"An extra carve would be nice," Cota said.

"Don't I get any say in this?" Sayata said. "Come on, guys. I'll do better next time."

They didn't answer. Whenever Sayata got close, they'd shuffle uncomfortably and adjust their weapons in a way that blocked her access.

"Uh... you're blocking the... um. If you could just— Er, okay, I'll just uh, signal the ship or something," Sayata said. Her throat felt oddly tight, as though the stupid, hot air formed a fist around it.

Things would have gone differently if she could have fought it on her mountain.

\- o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o -

As if screwing the hunt up hadn't been bad enough, the felynes hired to haul the kut-ku carcass on board refused to do it. They insisted that it would have to be carried by the crew on board instead. And of course it had been she, Sayata, who had to break it to them.

"What the hells d'you do to piss them off so much?" Captain Edgar said.

"I _didn't_ ," Sayata said. "They took one look at the thing and said ' _Nyao way. If you think for one mewnite we're touching that, mew've got another thing coming.'"_

"Hearing it in felyne don't make it'ny better. We're paid ter run the ship, not haul dead stuff around. That's cat work, Miss."

"I'm sure the Guild will be happy to compensate you," Sayata wheedled.

"They'd better," the captain grumbled. "Breaks over, boys... You c'n thank her, not me... now get to it..."

 _What a day_ , Sayata mused. So far she'd ruined the hunt, managed to get the transpurrters to quit, and as an added bonus, got everyone on board to hate her. And the day was still young! Plenty more opportunity for things to go wrong.

At least she could relax, now that the job was done. A comb of wind tasseled her short hair. She relished the warm brush of sunlight on her pale skin. The sky was a porcelain bowl, marbled blue with the few patches of sky not coated by thin clouds. The world always seemed so beautiful after the hunt. Her reward for cheating death one more time.

The tip of the sun had already stained the treetops gold by the time the _Waytide_ filled its helium sacs and began to climb. By the time Yuko Forest was just a floret of yellow broccoli in the distance, the ship settled into the usual cliques.

Captain Edgar, half-asleep at the wheel, mumbled air shanties with a gaggle of barrel-chested sailors and the Subpaw Cook, who passed around a platter of slightly burnt grilled cheeses. A handful of academics discussed the latest in algal farms. (Not a good investment, according to the one with the big hat.)

Everyone else busied themselves with the latest hunter gossip. Apparently Dave Barnes and Sheila Drett failed to kill a simple blangonga last week... whoever they were.

Listening to them was like waiting for a tigrex; she knew it was coming, and she could almost hear the roar of laughter when her party was asked to contribute to the growing pile of failures.

Well, some lessons life shared with the hunt. She knew her name would be dragged through the muck, but it wasn't a battle she could win. Best to abandon the scene and preserve what little dignity she had left.

What. A. Day.

Below the decks, sheltered behind a stack of tall crates, not even Sayata's cat-eared copy of the _Master Monster Manual_ could pacify her restless thoughts. She thumbed through the careworn book, a gift from her fiancée back in Jumbo, absentmindedly. _Rathalos, rathian, remobra, seltas_ , _seltas queen, seregios, shagaru magala..._

Shagaru. The heavenly beast of calamity. Demonic god of rebirth. One of the eight deities of Sha religion, not that the _Manual_ would list that. The _Manual_ had been a disappointment where most Sha icons were concerned, seeing as the Guild restricted information about elder dragons.

It had been Shagaru who orphaned Sayata and took her home.

...somehow or another, her thoughts always found their way back to Siki when she felt lost. Even though her heart belonged with Kaya, in Jumbo, a part of her yearned for the snow in a way her fiancée never truly understood, despite their shared exile from Heaven's Mount.

For Kaya, it had always been enough to be with her people. She was the Grand Guru's granddaughter, and Grand Priestess-in-waiting, so that was expected, she supposed. Noble, even. But Sayata's people had been the goofy couple who sang out-of-tune nursery rhymes to her and the mat of unruly brown hair she called her brother. On the hunt, her people were the ones she fought with. The ghost of their scorn made Sayata shiver in a way she hadn't since she fled the Arctic Ridge and its howling invaders.

Sayata realized she was getting her book wet. She set it down with something between a sniffle and a shudder, and blinked her eyes. _Count the positives,_ she heard Kaya say in that uncompromisingly-cheery voice of hers. _We have means to provide for ourselves, even if it isn't as comfortable as we're used to. We have the Sha. And we have each other._

Food, faith, and family. That was all anyone really needed, she supposed. Sayata took a deep breath to steady herself. One bad hunt wasn't the end of the world. She'd been through that already. But there was just something— something _off—_ about the hunt she couldn't shake. She'd already been through the worst life had to offer, so the loss of her fellow hunters' respect could be weathered too. So what, _what_ about that hunt was bothering her so much?

\- o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o

Time passed by slowly in the quiet ignominy of her hiding place. The fear of confrontation kept her from getting up, while the fear of being left behind kept her from sleep. All the while a creeping dread bled into her thoughts, staining them Frenzy-purple. The exact shade of that kut-ku's scales.

 _It could be acting under the effect of some blight,_ Sayata reasoned. _It's gypceros mating season after all... that was probably just poison. That turned its eyes red. Yeah..._

What did the _Manual_ have to say about blights? ' _Fireblight burns where applied. Iceblight drains the body of its warmth and stamina. Poison stains the body a miasmic purple' -_ ha!- ' _but fades over time, especially in monsters...'_

Could it have been poison after all? Perhaps they had been lucky to have caught the monster before its antibodies fought off the infection. But poison drained a monster's strength, and if anything, that kut-ku was abnormally strong. Reading on, Sayata found the section on Elder blights.

_'On Elder blights, dragonblight is perhaps the most insidious, capable of robbing the victim of wit and will. But most dangerous would certainly be the Frenzy, a pollenous death spread by gore magala and its fully realized self, the calamitous shagaru magala. The Frenzy destroys the body's natural ability to heal, and cannot be cured by any known substance. Nullberries stall its advance, but their effects are short-lived. The victim of the Frenzy suffers intense pain and unnatural strength. Red eyes, purple coloration, and excessive aggression characterize the infection.'_

Sayata closed the book shut. It sunk like an anchor into her lap, grounding her memory to the sight of the kut-ku, its awful shriek, the red eyes, the purple scales...

 _It's just a variant,_ Sayata told herself. You're doing it again- getting worked up all over nothing. This is just like the plum daimyo hermitaur incident. You're going to look for a purple kut-ku, and it'll be something that shoots poison from having eaten a bad konchu or something. You'll see. Just open the _Manual_.

As it turned out, blue kut-ku were a thing - ' _stronger and more aggressive than their pink counterparts_ ' - and so were bronze kut-ku. Maybe what they fought was the offspring of a bronze and blue kut-ku. It could happen.

To keep her thoughts from ruminating in a direction other than the obvious, logical choice, the rational one, the only one it could reasonably be, that what they fought was just a poisoned blue species, or maybe the hybrid offspring of two rare subspecies, Sayata focused her attention on the tumble of airship life above her.

She pictured the hollow _THUK_ above her as the friendly stampede of a Bhernese moofah, even though it was probably just the crew shifting barrels around again. The steady _tuk-tuk-tuk_ could only be someone descending the staircase. She froze when that happened, and tried not to breathe too loudly, in case it would somehow alert them to her presence. A few dozen _THUKs_ and _tuk-tuk-tuk_ s in short secession later, Sayata wondered what was going on.

One last rhythm of hurried feet preceded the airship's doctor, the Fly-sician. He bustled in and told one of the crewmates to sit on one of the beds on the other end of the underdeck. "Don't be gettin' into any more fights now Terry, y'hear?" he said. "Thought I told you to stop that nonsense."

"I'm just so _angry_ ," Sayata heard his patient say. "Dunno why."

"That's cabin fever for you," the Fly-sician said. "Go get some rest now. I'll have something for that dander later. Startin' to think something's gone 'round. Doesn't look normal, neither. Poisonous, almost."

" _Poison_?"

"I'm sure you'll be fine. Might be somethin' mood-alterin'. Gonna check that beast y'all hauled fer parasites later."

" _Parasites_?"

\- o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o

A few more uncomfortable conversations later, and the _Waytide_ lurched in that way it did when their destination was in sight. Sayata had to stuff down a puff of vindictive pleasure when Cota, Harold, and Gregory were all admitted into a cot each for purple dandruff and cabin fever.

As Shamos taught, _There is little strength in numbers when discord_ _is_ _brought to light..._ or something like that. Served them right for turning on her.

It was easy for Sayata to slip past the infirm residents of the sick bay. She was careful not to touch anything on her way out (even though there was _nothing_ to worry about) and the walkway had already been lowered. The sun was now set firmly in the sky, and Sayata took in the fullness of Jumbo Village.

It was a rustic place, about as different as you could get from Siki's solemn beauty. Dirt roads paved the way to large huts propped up by curved bone pillars, bound together with a forest-green canvas.

The red-and-silver jewels of a merchant's cart sparkled in the sun as she shouted, "Fish and apples! Fish and apples! See food? Buy seafood! And apples!"

Jumbo Village was a port town. When Sayata looked down, she saw the glimmer of sunlight reflected in the gentle waves which shook the wooden dinghies docked at its harbor. They rocked with a hypnotic tempo that made Sayata realize just how tired she was. At the base of the docks, a crowd gathered. Sayata could just make out a gaggle of curious townsfolk, peddlers, and...

"Kaya!" Sayata cried. Her fiancée was dressed in her traditional white dress, lined with blue-and-gold frills. She, like many wyverians in Jumbo Village, was barefoot, and craned on the tips of her digitigrade feet to see Sayata better. A pointy half-hood poked out from behind her dark hair like the peak of Heaven's Mount.

She was home.

"How did it go?" Kaya asked Sayata as soon as she cleared the ramp-way.

"It was great!" Sayata said. "They er, didn't even need my help."

It was half the truth, at least.

"We should celebrate!" Kaya said. "Our mighty hunter, back on another successful hunt."

"It would be lovely if I could just soak my feet for a bit," Sayata admitted. "But do you mind if we take it easy tonight?"

"Of course." Kaya pecked her on the cheek. "Take all the time you need."

Holding hands was a warm and sweaty ordeal in Jumbo's muggy heat, so they contended themselves to walking side-by-side. Kaya filled the tired silence with all the latest going-ons with the church, the council, and her own personal life.

"...so of course, I told him no, we don't even have a permit for that, but I don't think that'll be the last we hear about Jacques' plans for a monster zoo... And Sally— you know, the sweet old woman who sits in the front pews?— her grandson is thinking of moving here, to be a part of our community. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Yeah," Sayata said. She had only the faintest idea who Sally was, but the way Kaya talked more about her, she felt like she really knew her.

She had a powerful effect on people— she'd talk to someone for ten minutes and come out with their whole life story. It was like a superpower to Sayata, who could ask for someone's name thirteen times in a conversation and forget it fourteen.

Kaya was everything Sayata wanted to be: tall, pretty, smart, and above all else, _confident_. It was no small wonder how she ended up with someone as perfect as her. Opposites attracted, she supposed.

"Are you okay?" Sayata heard Kaya ask her. "You haven't said anything for a while."

"Oh, sorry," Sayata said. "Just— lost in thought, I guess. Hey, when did we get home?"

They stood at the threshold of their shared house. Well, mansion, if a mud-hut could be called that. It was three times the size of any of the buildings near it, a testament to how willing the Sikinese refugees were willing to provide for their priestess-in-waiting. And by extent, the sorry hunter who lived with her.

Their house served as a gathering hall for the people, so Sayata didn't feel too bad about their contribution. And, to be honest, she would have rathered a nice, cozy, _quiet_ house for the two of them. Instead, Sayata was treated to weekly reminders to wipe the dirt off her feet by Chambers, their butler of sorts.

Sayata and Chambers held a mutual understanding of each other since the day she and Kaya started dating.

They hated each other.

"Are you going to stand there and gawp like a simpleton or come inside?" came Chambers' raspy voice. He stood in the windowsill, a black-and-orange coat on bipedal legs, yellow eyes, tufty little ears, and a fluffy banded tail. The adorable embodiment of pure evil.

"Just a minute!" Kaya said. She was smiling, if anything _wider_ , at the sight of him. Ugh. Sayata supposed she couldn't help but be blind to the old felyne's intense dislike of her. Kaya was half-raised by Chambers, ever since she was a little wyverian girl, some forty years ago.

The whole age thing was... weird, with wyverians. Sayata tried not to let it get to her. In human terms, she was about as old as she was (maybe a _little_ older) but Chambers' favorite reminders, like "I was her favorite for longer than you've been born" got under her skin.

"Are you ready?" Kaya said. "I'm sure Chambers has something delicious cooked up in honor of your return."

"I'm sure he will," Sayata said, "I doubt it'll be because of _me_ , though."

"Nonsense. He's very fond of you!"

"He'd be very fond to be _rid_ of me, maybe."

Kaya pursed her lips, but said nothing. Sayata felt bad about coming between her and Chambers, but she's not the one who started their longstanding feud. Inside, an awkward silence hung, which only seemed to egg Chambers on.

"How'd it go?" Chambers asked. "I heard from the Subpaw Cook that someone was absolutely _dreadful_... nearly _killed_ someone, by the sounds of it. Not anyone on your squad, I hope, Sayata?"

"What's for dinner?" Sayata said. She and Kaya found their way to the kitchen table in the room left of the massive hall they entered. Chambers stirred a pot of something rich and steaming.

"The spoils of your last hunt arrived," Chambers said. "I wouldn't be too down if you flunked this one, too. The Guild thinks you're worth a whole eyeball, at least."

Chambers rolled a brown sack down the table, where it stopped with a small _thud_ against Sayata's dinner plate. "Gross," she said.

"It's beautiful," Kaya informed her, after she unraveled the package. "It's flawless, actually. What is it from?"

"Royal ludroth," Sayata said. "Not a bad hunt, all things considered." Sayata sat a little taller in her seat.

"Aren't you supposed to hit those on the head?" Chambers asked. "You know- hit things where their brains are located? But I suppose you'd have to have one to know that."

"It's fine to tease," Kaya said, "but I worry you don't know where to stop, Chambers. That ludroth paid half the rent last month." To Sayata she said, "It's a wonderful eye. I bet we could make a decoration out of it and sell it to Miss Angie at the market."

"Well, I uh, aim to please," Sayata said.

"More like 'can't aim,'" Chambers muttered under his breath. "Dinner is ready!" he said when Kaya opened her mouth. He passed two bowls of larinoth-beef stew. A swirl of plump vegetables clung to the meat and mushrooms.

Its savory aroma made Sayata's mouth water. She hadn't had a proper meal in days, not that she'd give Chambers the satisfaction of knowing.

"No hairs this time," Sayata said. "It's a compliment," she added sweetly, when Kaya shot her a look in turn. "Way better than dirt."

"Har har," Chambers said. "When you two are done, purr- _lease_ put the dishes in the sink. I'm not cleaning it if you forget it again, _Sayata_."

"Hey!" Sayata said.

""I'm sure that was mine last time," Kaya said. "I'll get it."

"Well, okay," Chambers said. "I'll go draw your bath, Miss Kaya. And _you_ , I'm sure, don't need to be reminded that you are not to enter until I say, Sayata."

"That'll be all," Kaya said, slightly pink. When the rusty pipes squealed their rusty _sreet_! and Chambers was safely out of earshot, Kaya sighed. "I wish you two could get along," she said.

"He started it!" Sayata said through a mouthful of tomatoes. "He always does. He's evil."

"He's just overprotective," Kaya said. "Maybe if you just- I don't know, ease up a bit-"

" _Me_? I'm not the one with the problem! I can't believe you're taking his side."

"I'm not," Kaya said. "I just- I wish you two could talk. I'm sure you have more in common than you realize."

"We do," Sayata said. "We both hate each other."

"And you both love me," Kaya pointed out. "So _please_ , 'Aya, can you at least try to get along? I'll have a talk with Chambers about his behavior. I promise."

"'Kay, 'Aya," Sayata said. "I promise." Sayata was a sucker for their shared nickname, and Kaya knew just when to bring it out. It was a good thing she devoted her life to acts of charity and service to the (mostly) benevolent Sha, she thought, because otherwise she could do some damage with that silver tongue of hers.

"Thank you," Kaya said. She linked her fingers with Sayata's and held it there. "How _did_ your hunt go, if you don't mind me asking? Chambers said it was a little rocky."

"Chambers was right," Sayata said glumly. "I missed and nearly shot Greg. It was dark! I couldn't see. Not my fault," she grumbled.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me. I could never do what you do."

"Really?" Sayata said. "It looks like you can do anything."

"I freeze up when I think about monsters. It's hard, sometimes, to talk about Shagaru, when I think of our home. I feel like a failure of a priestess sometimes, like I'm teaching something I don't fully believe. So I think it's really brave that you go back," Kaya said, "after everything you've been through. You inspire me to be a better teacher for my people."

Oh.

Sayata didn't know what to say to that. "There was purple stuff," she said lamely, as if the part that connected her heart to her brain was so full of love it blocked out any room for intelligible thought. "It was- tough, I mean. It reminded me of the Frenzy."

"The Frenzy is gone," Kaya said. "We left it behind fifteen years ago. The Guild made sure no Frenzied have escaped the mountain. There hasn't been a single sighting since. "

"What if one slipped through?"

"We're a long way from Siki," Kaya pointed out. "I'm sure the Guild would have notified us if we were in danger."

"Yeah..." Sayata said. "You're right. Just being paranoid, I guess."

"It's late," Kaya said, "and you haven't got much sleep. I'll ask Chambers to put in something to ease your muscles. I've no need to soak right now."

"Thanks," Sayata said. "You're the best." Kaya gave her hand a final squeeze before she went to talk with Chambers.

Sayata took the time by herself to stack the dishes on the counter. It had been her dishes last time; Kaya had been covering for her. It was the least she could do to put them up herself.

Outside the window, the sun was still high. Old Man Merrow pushed wheelbarrows of fish and fruit to a docked fisherboat, while his grandkids, Pip and Trip, passed a dirty leather ball back and forth in a game of Jaggi-Jack. And shy Trevor was still huddled in the corner of Barlow's General Store, mustering the courage to talk to the handsome man who stocked the shelves.

It was a beautifully normal day. Sayata prayed to all the Sha that it stayed that way.


End file.
